The Sea That Came After

That day, Yuu Yuuki went to Makoto Naruse's place to get back the money she needed for her mother's treatment. For the rest of her life she would never forget the way she ran barefoot out of his apartment that night. She hated herself for having been blind enough to date him in the first place. Had it really been because of his sweet talk? How stupid she had been.

"Ten thousand yen? I think that's too little for a breakup fee."

There was no way she was ever getting back the ten thousand yen Makoto had borrowed from her. The moment she asked for it, he brought up breaking up, and the two of them exploded into a fight. At last the man's stingy, greedy, shameless face stood fully exposed before Yuu. Distorted with anger, he shouted, "That necklace you're wearing, those shoes on your feet, which one of them wasn't bought by me?" Furious, Yuu pressed a hand to her chest, afraid her heart might burst. She tore off the necklace, yanked off the shoes, and hurled everything at him in a heap, too angry even to speak. Then she slammed the door behind her and ran. All the while she kept telling herself not to cry, absolutely not to cry. But it was the middle of the night, and by the time she reached the bus stop the last bus back to school was long gone. There was no taxi in sight out on the suburban road, and in any case she had no spare money for one. Her bare feet struck pebble after pebble until they were bruised blue and purple. Aggrieved, she sat down on the bench and cried anyway. When the tears were spent, she began cursing into the empty street. "Makoto Naruse, you disgusting bastard! Other than the necklace and the shoes, what have you ever given me? Go to hell! Use that ten thousand yen to buy yourself a coffin!" That was when Shu Kanbara and the others showed up. A whole gang of modified motorcycles came roaring up through the night. Several of them pulled right up in front of Yuu and whistled at her with ugly grins. "Hey, pretty girl. Want to go for a ride?" At that moment Yuu herself had no idea what snapped in her. Maybe rage had simply scrambled her brain. She agreed at once. "Fine. Let's go." Before the boy on the motorcycle had even reacted, she had already swung herself up behind him. She had really thrown caution away. The people around them burst into laughter. The bald rider had no choice but to kill the engine and turn around to say, "Miss, I was only joking. How am I supposed to race with you on the back?" But Yuu refused to get down. Then she saw Shu Kanbara come over from the bikes in front to ask what was happening. He was clearly the one organizing the run. The bald guy pointed at Yuu behind him. Shu looked at her bare feet and asked where her home was so he could take her back. "Take me to the hospital," Yuu said. Shu asked no more questions. He simply drove her there. The night wind swelled inside his shirt. He smelled clean, nothing like the sour sweat on the bald man's back. All the way to the hospital, Yuu lay against Shu's back and cried. She was unbearably sad, though not because of Makoto, and she did not know why. What remained of Shu in her memory after that was the broad patch of his shirt damp with her tears, and his handsome profile as he drove with all his attention fixed ahead. On that very day, Yuu Yuuki's mother left her forever.

The time after her mother's death was the cruelest stretch of Yuu's life. Penniless and with no one to rely on, she lived on in humiliation. Her uncle took back the house Yuu's grandfather had left for her mother to live in, saying Yuu was already an adult and could find work to support herself. He needed the house for his own marriage. He also said the money borrowed during her mother's illness would have to be repaid eventually. With her mother gone, Yuu lost that whole side of her family too. She said nothing. She gritted her teeth and moved out, then ended up staying with a distant relative, a drunk who came home wasted every day and beat his wife. Yuu kept her door shut tight, stuffed earphones in her ears, and listened to rock music so she would not have to hear the wailing outside. At the time she thought herself heartless. She could not go out and stop the fights. If she did, she would only be beaten too. Whenever he was sober, the drunk relative kept muttering that Yuu lived under his roof and ate his food without paying him a single yen. She was never full in that house. Some days she went to school without eating at all. Then one day the drunk's wife packed up and ran away for good. The drunk came back half-delirious in the middle of the night and went wild, pounding on Yuu's door until the thin panel seemed ready to split open. With the door on the verge of giving way, Yuu jumped from the fourth-floor balcony, determined to die if she had to. She was lucky. She landed on the rain awning below and only twisted her ankle. That night she lay out there in the rain while the drunk inside the house cursed and smashed things. Biting down on her own arm to keep from making a sound, she let the rain and tears run together into her mouth. After that, she moved out in a hurry. She became a waitress at a restaurant simply because it provided food and a bed. She could no longer go on studying violin. It was hard enough just to keep herself alive. She sold the violin she loved and dropped out of music school. On the day she left, she did not cry. After that she did not cry again. Then one day Makoto Naruse showed up at the restaurant with another girl. Yuu waited on them, pouring tea, carrying dishes. Makoto looked at her as if she were a stranger and even seemed faintly disgusted by the oil-stained apron she wore. When he left, he tossed her a tip. Yuu did not want it. He laughed coldly. "Take it. You obviously need money that badly." Grinding her teeth, she took the money. She did need it. There was no point having a quarrel with money. In front of money, Yuu Yuuki was so lowly she had no pride left. She wanted, just as the writer Sanmao once said, to one day accidentally strike it rich, heap up tens of millions of dollars, douse them with gasoline, set them on fire, and walk away without even looking back to see them turn to ash. If Yuu ever burned money, she wanted to do it in front of Makoto Naruse and those relatives, just to watch the pain on their faces.

One year later, Yuu Yuuki suddenly had money. Her father had made a fortune in business and began giving her huge amounts to spend. He even bought her an apartment. Yuu was not close to him; in truth there was no feeling between them at all. He had always been away on business, and when Yuu was eight he divorced her mother. Yuu grew up with her mother, and her father had not even attended the funeral, so Yuu carried resentment toward him and had never once thought of going to him in her hardest days. But when he gave her money, she took it. She took the money and bought luxury goods, LV bags and expensive shoes, made all kinds of friends, and squandered her days in heedless extravagance. The boyfriend she picked up later was obsessed with heavy motorcycles, so Yuu decided to buy him one. The two of them went together to look at bikes, and that was how she ran into Shu Kanbara again. He seemed not to remember her. He was trying to sell his motorcycle. Yuu's boyfriend loved the bike and could not stop touching it. But Yuu saw too much reluctance in Shu's eyes. The motorcycle had to be something he loved deeply. She remembered that he had once taken her to the hospital on that machine, and if not for Shu and that bike, she might not have seen her mother one last time. Besides, she herself had once sold the violin she loved in order to survive. She knew how it felt. Just when the price had been agreed on, Yuu suddenly refused to buy it after all. The boyfriend flew into a rage. He accused her of breaking her word and hurled insults. Yuu said nothing. She was completely unmoved. In the end, he broke up with her right there in front of Shu Kanbara.

After the boyfriend stormed off, Shu said, "Even if I don't sell it to him, I'll sell it to someone. I'll have to let this bike go sooner or later." "Then sell it to me," Yuu said. The look on his face made it clear he thought there was something wrong with her. "But before you sell it to me, could you take me somewhere on it?" she asked, looking at him with bright anticipation. "Where?" Shu hesitated, then answered. "Shonan. The sea."

It may have been the happiest day of Yuu Yuuki's life. Shu Kanbara drove her all day and all night before they finally reached the coast at Shonan. They hardly spoke on the way, yet whenever it was time to stop and rest, they always understood each other without words. It was dawn when they arrived. The sun had not yet fully risen. It lay gently on the surface of the water. The sea shaded from deep blue into purplish red, and the sky was blue-violet. It was unbelievably beautiful. Looking at those vast expanses of sky and water, Yuu felt her eyes fill all at once. She ran along the beach shouting at the sea, "I'm here! You're still this beautiful! You still haven't changed!" Shu only stood there quietly and watched her, watched her act like a mad girl crying out at the ocean. Everything else had changed. The sea alone had not. It was the second time Yuu had seen the sea. The first was when she was eight and her father had taken her and her mother to a seaside resort, where he told her mother the truth and reached an agreement to divorce. Yuu remembered it clearly. A sea that beautiful had become one of her saddest memories. She remembered her small self overhearing the adults, then running to the beach and crying face-down in the sand. At the time there had been a little boy nearby building a sandcastle. Hearing her cry, he ran over, pulled her to the castle, and said, "Don't cry. You can live in my sandcastle. Look, it's all yours." Even now, Yuu still remembered that sandcastle. So she asked Shu, "Will you build one with me?" Shu nodded, and she laughed with the pure happiness of a child, waving her arms as she ran across the beach. In the end, after a long time, the two of them did finish a sandcastle. "It's so ugly," Yuu laughed, looking at the misshapen pile. Shu grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it at her. "We worked hard on that. How is it ugly?" "It just is," Yuu said, scooping up sand to fling back at him before darting away. Shu chased after her and threw sand at her too. Yuu was so happy. When they were tired, they fell down on the soft sand. Yuu told him about her childhood, about her parents' divorce, about the little boy who built her a sandcastle and told her not to cry. Shu told her his story in return, and they talked from daylight into night. He said he had never hated his parents. They had abandoned him and each gone off to start new families. There are always lives more miserable than the life you think is the most miserable. In front of Shu Kanbara, the sorrows Yuu had thought unbearable no longer seemed quite so absolute.

Shu had been raised by his grandparents. When he was eighteen, both of them died. He stopped studying and learned to race, then formed a motorcycle crew with a group of friends, buying his first bike with the money his grandparents had left him. After that he made a living from the prize money of races. At the best of times, one race could bring in twenty thousand yen. From the look on his face, those days of racing had genuinely made him happy. Yuu asked why he wanted to sell the motorcycle. He said he was tired of it. If you did the same thing long enough, there would always come a day when you grew tired. Lying on the sand with her chin propped in her hands, Yuu listened to his story and felt a kind of admiration rise in her. Before they fell asleep, Shu said to her, "Your legs are beautiful." Yuu was wearing very short shorts that day. Plenty of people had praised her legs before, but only Shu's praise made her heart lift. Then he added, "I still remember how you looked, barefoot, a year ago." After saying that, he fell asleep. Yuu was so delighted she could not sleep for a long time. So he had not forgotten her after all. His sleeping profile in the dark, the sea wind, the sound of the waves, all of it became something Yuu would never forget for the rest of her life. When morning came, Shu was gone. His motorcycle stood on the sand not far away. On a sudden impulse Yuu thought how like the wind he always was, coming and going without a trace. Perhaps, she imagined, he had leapt into the sea and turned into a fish.

Later, because of those beautiful legs, Yuu was discovered one day by a talent scout while shopping with friends and was taken off to shoot advertisements, first for jeans. When the ad came out, the posters stood at counters in department stores everywhere. The Yuu on them was dazzling. The small blemishes on her face had all been airbrushed away, and the legs wrapped in tight denim looked long and perfect. After the jeans ad came a skirt ad, then boots, then stockings. After the stockings she somehow ended up in a film, in a role so small it was forgotten at a glance. Then came television dramas, where she played minor women and was criticized for her bad acting. After that she put out a record. Yuu herself had no idea how her hoarse, off-key voice had managed to be called distinctive, but after the album she became modestly famous. Suddenly there were people all around her: an agent, assistants, a stylist, and a driver. Three years after their trip to the sea, Shu Kanbara, whom Yuu had not seen once in all that time, abruptly became that driver. Both of them remembered the sea, but neither mentioned it. Every day Shu drove to Yuu's apartment to take her to the company, to filming locations, to events, and he doubled as her bodyguard as well. At night, when at last there was a little space for just the two of them, Yuu asked where he had been and what he had been doing all those years. In the same steady tone as ever, he said he had still been driving, taxis mostly, and now he was her driver. There was something of fate's mockery in it, yet he was glad to see that Yuu had succeeded, and worried for her too. This world, he warned her, was not so simple. He was right. The company she signed with was not content to make money from a few commercials and small roles. They wanted Yuu to shoot explicit scenes. They tried every argument they could think of, but Yuu refused them all. Then they produced her contract, which stated that she had to obey the company's arrangements. No matter what it cost, Yuu demanded to terminate it. She poured in all the money she had, even the apartment she lived in, before she finally resolved the matter. Perhaps those little entertainment agencies built their fortunes on artists' penalty fees. When she walked out of the company, Shu was still standing outside waiting for her. Yuu laughed at herself and said she had nothing now. She was no longer an entertainer, so he did not need to drive her anymore. Shu smiled and answered, "I quit too. I'll only be your driver." At least Yuu was not left with nothing. She had gained Shu Kanbara and his love. "Want to go for a ride?" she asked him. "That motorcycle has been with me all this time."

Yuu Yuuki went from being a young artist with the potential to become a great star to becoming an ordinary person again. She returned to music school and took up the violin once more. She was the oldest student in her class, but she worked hard, harder than she had ever studied the violin before. You only cherish something most deeply once you have lost it and found it again. She and Shu rented a place near the school. She went to class while Shu went to work. He found a job repairing motorcycles, work he was good at. He said it was tiring but that he liked it. Even so, he still hardly rode anymore. Again and again Yuu pestered him to take her out for a ride, or to go back to the sea the way they had three years before, but Shu never agreed. He never made excuses. He simply said no. His motorcycle remained locked in the other room the whole time. Yuu knew there had to be a reason, but she never asked. She kept waiting for him to tell her on his own. Then one day Makoto Naruse suddenly turned up at the music school and demanded money from her. Yuu found the man more repulsive than ever. Why should she give him anything? Makoto pulled out a paper bag. Inside was a thick stack of photographs. He had studied photography. Years before, when Yuu had still been a student at music school, she had been hired by a wedding company to model bridal gowns. Makoto had been the photographer. That was how they met, and how she became his girlfriend. They had dated only three months. Yuu had no idea when he had taken those almost nude photographs of her. He knew she had once been an entertainer and had a bit of a name. Why work so hard at the violin now, he said, when she could make money much faster in entertainment? If she used those photographs to create a scandal, who knew, she might even stage a comeback. Yuu bit her lip until it nearly bled. She wanted to claw that despicable face apart. She did not tell Shu about the blackmail. Instead, she went to her father and asked him for help, the first time she had ever begged him for anything, and the last. Perhaps he truly did feel guilty toward her and her mother, because he agreed. Yuu gave Makoto the money and took back the photographs and negatives. "Why should I go?" he asked slyly while counting the cash. Yuu pulled out a small knife and held it beneath his chin. "Because I can die with you right now." Makoto went pale, then fled. It would be best never to see him again. If she did, Yuu really might kill him. Shu Kanbara disappeared again after that. When Yuu saw the photos he had already found, she did not take up her violin that night. Instead she grabbed a bottle of red wine and went up to the rooftop. Their apartment was on the top floor of the twelfth story, and because there was no air-conditioning, she and Shu often came up there to drink on hot nights and slept there until dawn when they were drunk enough. From above, everything looked so small. Yuu climbed onto the railing and sat there drinking, her legs swinging in the air. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. Rain began to fall in a thin sheet. She remembered the year she had jumped from a fourth-floor balcony at that relative's house. Now that same fear came over her again, the fear of having no one and nothing to depend on. Suddenly someone seized her from behind and dragged her down to the ground. Struggling to her feet, she saw Shu under her, still clinging to her tight. "Where did you go?" she cried. "Don't leave me. Those photos weren't something I wanted to take. I don't know how it happened." Sobbing, she clung to Shu and tried to explain. Shu cried too, his face buried in her hair. They simply held each other and wept. He never told Yuu that he had seen the whole blackmail scene with Makoto; it hurt him too much. When they had both quieted down, Shu said, "What I fear most is not being able to make you happy." Then, clutching his head in pain, he said, "I killed someone once." He buried his face against his knees. It was one of the riders from his motorcycle crew, his best friend, the bald man who had whistled at Yuu and egged her into going for a ride the first time she ever met Shu. Later Yuu often thought that if not for that bald man, she might never have met Shu at all. She was grateful to the man, even if he had only been joking. During a race, he crashed and flew off the road with his bike. They could not save him. That race had been between only Shu and the bald man, because the bald man had said he was determined to beat Shu just once. He had begged many times before, and Shu had always refused. But that one time he agreed. Ever since, he had blamed himself for saying yes, blamed himself for not slowing down, blamed himself for not letting the other man win from the start. If he had, his friend might not have died. He had kept condemning himself ever since. Yuu held him and comforted him. It had been an accident, she said. The bald man would not blame him. If he had deliberately let him win, that was when he truly would have been angry. Only then did Yuu understand why Shu had wanted to sell the motorcycle he loved and why he had refused ever since to ride it again. Seeing him in such pain broke her heart. He would not blame you, she kept saying. He would not. He would not.

When Yuu's father remarried, he asked her to be the bridesmaid. She had wanted to refuse, but Shu told her that whatever else he was, he was still her father. At the wedding Yuu played the violin. By then she had become very good. She had taken part in several major competitions and won prizes in them. The bride was gentle and beautiful. Seeing her father smile so happily as the groom, Yuu found herself glad for him too. She had already forgiven him. He asked her to move in and live with him after the wedding, but Yuu declined gently. She said she could take care of herself. Her father did not press. He knew she wanted to do the things she loved. And when the wedding was over, Yuu saw Shu Kanbara waiting for her at the entrance, sitting on the motorcycle he had not ridden in so long. He smiled at her and said, "Let's go for a ride. Let's go see the sea." He knew it was the gift she wanted most. Yuu had already cried out and run toward him before he had even finished speaking. It was a brilliantly clear day. They rode all the way toward the coast. The sea from before had been that blue, and the sea that came after was just as blue.